Get Katja (17 page)

A bead of sweat rolls down Kohl’s brow, kinking at an indentation in his forehead and sweeping down to his eyebrow. He blinks it away but it seeps into the hairs before emerging at the top of his eyelid then trickling into his eye.

His hands are lifeless, strapped to the chair in which he is seated not to prevent him from moving them but to prevent them from slipping off without him being able to reposition them again. If they dropped they would just sit there, blood gathering within them and perhaps building up a little clot that would soon work its way up into his brain and end the torture of blinding drips of his own sweat and the sounds of fucking coming from through the wall.

Previously he would have welcomed that little bullet of his own plasma, or have just wished he had never been rescued from the boat in the first place—but that was before he had seen the poster.

The door opens and Moonbeam is back, his skin glistening with sweat, his chin stained with lipstick, tucking his shirt back into the standard-issue white trousers. He does up his buttons, once again hiding the beads he wears, and slicks back his hair. Closes the door and smiles at Kohl.

“Mr Kohl,” he says, still catching his breath. From the corridor outside, the sounds of footsteps and a curvy figure brushes past the window. “How are we these evening?”

“I’m stuck in a chair unable to move anything other than my index finger and I have to stare at your ugly fucking face every day.”

The nurse either doesn’t hear Kohl or chooses to ignore him, busying himself with the chart clipped to the end of the patient’s bed. He scans it, then clips it back into place, before crossing to Kohl. Kohl can smell the woman on him—her perfume, her body. He closes his eyes for a few moments while Moonbeam checks over the readouts on the bank of little monitors attached to the equipment keeping Kohl alive.

“Your blood pressure is a little high,” the nurse says absently. He adjusts a couple of dials on the machines then retrieves a little plastic cup of pills from a nearby trolley. “Open up.”

Kohl does so then suddenly snaps his mouth shut. “Red
first
,” he says.

Moonbeam looks down at the pill he has tipped into his hand. “They all have to be taken Mr Kohl, you don’t have to worry about—”

“Red!” Kohl says, louder this time. “Red then purple then blue then white then yellow-blue split. You of all people should understand the importance of order. Idiot.”

The nurse does as instructed, Kohl exuding threat and menace despite his condition, dropping the pills onto the other man’s tongue one by one and letting him swallow them.

“All done,” Moonbeam says, smiling like a born-again Christian, like a children’s TV presenter. “Now I have to go complete my rounds but if there’s anything else at all I can get you all you need to do is—”

“I want you to help me kill someone,” Kohl says.

The nurse, already starting to walk away, stops in his tracks. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me. My voice still works fine.”

Moonbeam laughs nervously, not coming any closer. “I thought you said you wanted me to help you kill—”

“I did,” Kohl cuts him off. “Come here.”

Moonbeam looks around, perhaps hoping that Kohl was talking to someone else. Anyone else.

“I—”

“Come. Here.” Kohl’s machines beep and whine as if urging the nurse onwards.

Moonbeam does as instructed, one hand subconsciously going to the beads hidden beneath his uniform. He lingers before Kohl, knowing that the man is utterly chair-bound but still half-expecting him to launch himself at Moonbeam.

“Look out the window, across the street.”

“There’s no one there.”

“On the wall, you moron. The poster.”

“Which one?”

“Left-hand side, just above the anarchist stencil,” Kohl tells him, the spot memorised after having stared at it for almost the entire evening.

“The . . . punk band?” He squints, trying to make out the writing emblazoned across it but can’t manage it.

“She’s the one who did this to me. She’s obviously tried to change her appearance but I’ll never forget that face.”

“Mr Kohl, I don’t think you quite realize what you’re saying.”

“Don’t patronise me. You’re the one always going on about Karma. This is Karma.”

“That’s not how it works,” the nurse says, now fingering one of his necklaces having popped open a button.

“Yeah? Who decides that? God?”

“I don’t believe in a deity, the Universe—”

“
Regardless
, here I am, stuck in a chair and left to stare out this fucking window all day and
her
face is plastered up right outside it. You don’t think the Universe is trying to tell me something? I’m being given a chance to make things right.”

“It’s not telling you to
kill
someone, whatever you think they might have done to you.”

“But it’s telling you to fuck that pretty little thing in the closet next door every night is it? That is, assuming it’s not your wife in there with you.”

Moonbeam follows Kohl’s gaze to the wedding ring on his fingers and he snaps the other hand across it protectively. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I may be a cripple but I’m not deaf,” Kohl says quietly. “And I’m not stupid.”

Sensing the nurse’s defences weakening, Kohl switches tact. “Then why don’t we let the Universe decide what should happen?”

“What do you mean?”

“If we were to, say, just . . . set things in motion. If we did something . . . small . . . then leave Karma to decide what consequences should follow? I mean, we couldn’t change what was destined to happen, could we? That’s for the Universe to decide.”

“Well, yes, that’s true but . . .”

“Good. Then all I’m asking is for you to make a few adjustments to the poster.”

“What kind of adjustments?”

“So you’ll do it?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“After what she did I won’t be the only one after her—others will recognise her too. I may not be able to do much from this chair but they could.”

“Killing is a dark energy which the Universe—”

“We’re not killing anyone, I already told you that,” Kohl insists, keeping his voice level, realising that the softer approach is working more effectively. “At worst it’s . . . vandalism. The poster already says where she’ll be and when, if someone else out there recognises her and decides to do something . . . well that’s their choice isn’t it? We’re not forcing them. We’re barely doing anything at all, really.”

The nurse is working his beads again. He keeps glancing out at the poster. He nods his head in reluctant agreement.

“You have a video camera?” Kohl asks.

“What for?”

“I need you to be there—at the gig.”

Before the nurse can protest Kohl cuts him off.

“I want to see it when it happens.
If
it happens,” he quickly corrects himself. “I want to see what Karma decides for her. Or,” and the change in the tone of his voice makes up for what he can no longer communicate through posture, “I could just tell your superiors about what you’ve been getting up to and then we could see what Karma decides for
you
.”

Ten minutes later Kohl watches through the same window which has been his only view of the world for the past few months as the nurse appears on the street below. The man takes something from inside the dark jacket which covers his uniform and scribbles on the poster.

When he’s done he steps back and glances up at Kohl, not able to see the patient in the dark-reflected glass, but knowing he is there. Kohl’s mouth twists itself as close as it can to a smile at the sight of the Mohawk and trach tube scrawled onto the image of Katja.

Then the nurse pulls his jacket around himself and walks off, ready to repeat this vandalism across the city.

“Yeah, fuck you, too,” the woman growls into the mike and the sound check finishes.

Moonbeam looks around, wondering if any potential attackers would now put in the appearance he had been waiting for throughout the ear-splitting cacophony that had been going on for the last twenty minutes, but the place is even emptier than it had been to start with. It is still likely if anyone had seen the posters then they would wait until the gig proper later that night but he also knows that he can’t risk Kohl’s wrath by missing anything so he ambles towards the stage, watching as the band slips into the passageway beyond. A heavy in a bomber jacket ensures he can’t follow them and so instead he leaves the place and heads around the back—in time to see Katja being confronted by a trio of transvestites.

This is it
, he thinks.
Shit, this is it.

Lingering at the entrance to the back-alley he slips out the video camera he had brought, flinching at the electronic beep which sounds when it is switched on. He holds the camera up, not sure if he actually wants anything to happen or not, keeps it steadied on them, waiting, just waiting—and then Katja just walks away. He steps back into the shadow of a doorway for safety and watches her leave the alley and make her way up the main street, expecting that the Tgirls would perhaps come chasing after her. But nothing happens.

Kohl will not be happy.

And then he spots the car.

A crapped-out station wagon, it drifts onto the road at a slow speed, keeping its distance from the fast-walking punk up ahead but clearly tracking her, its headlights turned off. Moonbeam hurries to his own vehicle, parked a short distance away, leaving the headlights off and following the flickering brake-lights of the car as it turns again and again to trace Katja’s strangely erratic route until suddenly the headlights come on and the car lunges at her. She starts to run but someone leaps from the vehicle. Moonbeam parks and hurriedly fumbles with the camera to get it into position just in time to see the hefty figure crash down on top of her. He films the brief struggle, his stomach churning at the thought that he could be capturing on film a person’s final moments, keeps rolling as the man holds a rag to her face then picks up the punk’s limp body and dumps her into the rear seat of his car.

Moonbeam zooms in, the camera’s crappy lens struggling in the low light, the image grainy and jerky.

Then suddenly there is someone else in the shot, a woman with bright pink hair tied back in a ponytail, wearing gloves of some sort. She stabs something into the neck of the fat man who had grabbed Katja and now he goes limp too. She shoves her hand into the man’s overcoat and pulls out his wallet, and for a moment Moonbeam thinks that this is nothing more than a simple mugging as she goes through its contents. But then she drops it and crosses to the car.

Keep filming
, Moonbeam tells himself.
Just keep filming, this isn’t your fault, whatever happens is Fate, it would have happened anyway.

The pink-haired woman pulls Katja from the Oldsmobile and checks her pulse before transferring the punk to her own vehicle, parked up a few metres ahead. She pulls away cautiously, slowly, as if not wanting to raise any suspicions.

Moonbeam puts his car back into gear and drifts forwards, headlights still off. He stops the car by the body of the fat man, careful to keep his distance from Miss Pink. The needle sticks out of his neck glinting in the streetlights, the contents of his wallet are scattered around him. Reluctant to leave the safety of his vehicle he opens the door just enough to reach down and picks up a business card.

Detective Dixon DeBoer.

It just keeps getting better.

The fat man, the detective, had taken Katja down viciously, dosed her with something to knock her out. No cuffs, no calling it in. Decidedly unofficial. But Miss Pink had been different, almost caring—some sort of personal protection perhaps?

Moonbeam reaches under his collar for his beads and rubs them rapidly. Miss Pink’s rear lights are now far up ahead, almost out of sight.

Kohl would be satisfied with the footage though, wouldn’t he? That would be enough, wouldn’t it?

Knowing the answer he jumps back in his car, revs the engine and hurries after her.

To a club heavy with the scent of latex and sweat, the furniture all cut-glass edged with black as if a glitzy high rise had been scavenged piece by piece and then re-assembled beneath the blinking neon lights. A semi-circular bar emerges from one wall, polished glasses suspended on wires that run above the bar staff. Red leather sofas, as dark as clotted blood, are arranged in a grid-like pattern, the one nearest him populated by women in a rubber skirts and a man with a shaven, tattooed head. They look up as he enters, clocking his waterproof jacket, the collar of his uniform sticking out slightly, but either don’t care that he looks so out of place or are too wasted to notice.

He does his best to look casual as he drifts through the club, following Miss Pink as she hauls Katja’s body towards a door at the back, one of the punk’s arms wrapped around her shoulder as if merely assisting a drunken friend. She enters a code into a keypad by the door then she’s gone. He edges closer, one hand wrapped around the camera hidden inside his jacket, until someone shouts “Can’t go back there.”

Moonbeam tells them sorry, makes up an excuse about looking for the bathroom, then backs away before they can direct him. Not sure what else to do he sits down on one of the sofas as far away from the smiling transvestite at the other end as he can. He keeps a close watch on the door, every now and again a couple (always a couple but sometimes of the same sex, some times of the opposite) punches in the code and disappears into whatever lies beyond until, eventually, Miss Pink re-emerges—without Katja.

And that is either really good—or really bad.

He grabs an empty glass and pretends to drink from it until the woman has passed and again he thinks,
Is that enough?
He thinks,
Will Kohl be happy now?
He could just leave now and that would be it, the deal done, right?

He grabs his beads and works them, ignoring the Tgirl who scooched herself towards him a few inches without him realising, then gets up suddenly and hurries to a quiet spot at the back. He takes out his phone and dials Kohl’s number.

“So?” Kohl answers immediately. His voice is faint through the voice-activated headset Moonbeam had smuggled in and, with difficulty, affixed to Kohl’s ear amidst the tubes that encircle the man’s head.

“It’s uh . . . she’s uh . . .”

“Speak up, you idiot, I can barely hear you. Are you still at the gig?”

“No . . . uh . . . I followed her. Someone took her. They have her now.”

There is a brief exhalation from Kohl and Moonbeam pictures a smile spreading across the man’s face. “Who?”

“First a guy but then this other chick came along, she injected him with something and . . . and then took Katja.”

“Took her where?”

“A club. Called uh . . . Flesh Heel I think. I’m there now.”

“So where’s Katja? What’s the woman doing with her?”

“I don’t know, she took her through a door in the back then came back out without her.”

“Well what are they doing with her?”

“I don’t know! Look, man, I’m, going to get out of here, this place has a fucking dark aura and there’s a tranny that keeps—”

“You’re staying fucking put until you know whether that bitch is getting her due or not. Have you got the camera?”

“Yeah but man, there’s something else going on—that other guy, the one that jumped her first? He’s a cop, man. A frickin’ detective!”

“What makes you think that?”

“Because I’m looking at his frickin’ business card right now, man! Detective Dixon DeBoer it says right here!”

“
Dixon DeBoer?
That’s who was after her?”

“Yeah. You know him?”

“I know of him. Used to work shipments from the island, made sure no overly keen customs guys got in the way and dealt with them if they did. Took pleasure in it too, from what I heard. Guy’s as crooked and nasty as they come.”

“Yeah, well, he needs to learn to watch his back ’cause Miss Pink has Katja now and so we’re done, right? I did as you asked.”

“You’re going nowhere you dirty little hippy,” Kohl snaps. “DeBoer, I know, would deal with the little bitch but this other one? Find out where she was taken and what they have planned for her and don’t you dare think about leaving until you know, you got me? Otherwise the next call I’ll be making is to the ward sister—or your wife.”